


Negative Space

by CaffieneKitty



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Angst, Character Study, Dean wants his family whole, Dean without Sam, Dysfunctional Family, Episode Tag, Episode: s05e02 Good God Y'all!, Gen, Loneliness, POV Dean Winchester, Present Tense, Sam wants independence, kripke'd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-21
Updated: 2009-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 06:08:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffieneKitty/pseuds/CaffieneKitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Negative space can be used to depict a subject in a chosen medium by showing everything around the subject but not the subject itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Negative Space

**Author's Note:**

> _Originally posted on Livejournal September 21, 2009_

The first few days it's funny as hell (not that Hell was funny), explaining to Castiel euphemisms and bathrooms and any of the ninety billion incomprehensible things humans do. If nothing else, it's a distraction. But Castiel is as bad as Sam was at five for questions, which brings Dean back to wondering about Sam again. What he's doing, is he safe? Is he fighting it or giving in?

Dean doesn't know why he thought he'd worry less about Sam if they were apart.

After a while it starts to grate, just Dean and the angel, roaming around looking for God. The car is mostly silent after that very awkward discussion about listening to lyrics and what they mean. It's not that Dean's giving up his music, he's avoiding a headache while Castiel rides shotgun, which in itself is a whole 'nother layer of weird.

Castiel doesn't poof away nearly as often, like he's reserving what power he has available for something more important than enigmatically-timed disappearances. Maybe Zachariah and the ones hunting him can track him when he's in angel-space or wherever it is he goes when he flutters off. Maybe Castiel has decided he can't leave Dean alone now, that he's not safe alone. Either way, Dean doesn't know.

Dean's never going to teach Cas to drive. There are some kinds of pain the world is better off without.

He hopes Sam gets a car. A real car, some big classic tank, something with steel in the chassis. Gas prices what they were, they'd probably sell for cheap, but be a pain to keep in gas. He hopes Sam gets a house, a job. He hopes Sam gets normal, for however long it lasts. Cas's rib tattoo would keep Sam off the apocalyptic radar, sideline him as long as he kept his head down.

Dean hopes Sam remembers to keep his head down.

-

Dean takes it upon himself to make sure Castiel eats something, remembering how starved Jimmy was while the angel was away. Cas stares at most food like it's made of disease and usually sticks to a salad.

This also brings Dean back to Sam.

Dean only ever tries to get Castiel to eat bacon once. It's not that the angel quotes Old Testament scripture or turns his borrowed nose up at it, it's the technical details of why pigs had been declared unclean and the subsequent discussion of modern versus biblical farming practices that ensues that Dean doesn't care to repeat over a BLT ever again.

Of course Castiel eating leads to a more practical discussion about the purpose of bathrooms. That exchange also goes on Dean's list of 'conversations I never want to have again'.

It's not that Castiel is stupid, he just doesn't think in biology or physical existence unless he focuses on it. Keeping himself under the radar and earthbound is no doubt as irritating to the angel as it is to Dean, having to answer questions he'd last had to answer when Sam was three, five, nine.

And back to Sam again. Always back to Sam.

-

Dean's glad Jimmy Novak isn't a big guy. Driving at night, catching a glimpse of the black-haired, trench-coated angel sitting bolt upright and staring ahead at the dark road as though the lines flashing by are passing him secret messages is not even remotely close to seeing Sam there. But then that difference brings memories of Sam in the passenger seat; sacked out, mouth slack, snoring, knees and elbows everywhere, sleeping no different at twenty-seven than he did when he was twelve.

Sam is always lurking in Dean's memory, waiting for an ambush. The memory of what's absent sometimes hits like a faceful of ice-water. _He's not dead. I can call him. He can call me._

It's best not to call. They both have stuff to work out. How could Dean re-build trust in Sam if he kept checking up on him? How could Sam learn to trust himself if Dean was there to keep him within the lines? Best to leave it alone. Dean would do what he had to to stop the Apocalypse and Sam would be out of it. Safe.

_This is how it has to be._

Dean keeps telling himself the same thing as he drives through the night, Castiel perched beside him watching the view out the windshield like it's a foreign movie with no subtitles.

_This is how it has to be._

\- - -  
(that's all, just some musing)


End file.
